J.J. Abrams’ Bad Robot and ChAIR Announce Video Game SPYJINX

Bad Robot, J.J Abrams’ production company, through which he has produced everything from Alias to Lost toFringe, and even Star Trek: Into Darkness and Star Wars VII: The Force Awakens, is teaming up with the team at ChAIR to bring a new video game to a multitude of platforms. With the stellar Infinity Blade series under ChAIR’s belt, the collaboration project titled SPYJINX sounds promising.

In an interview with Geoff Keighley, Abrams and Donald Mustard sat down to discuss the game. Though no actual gameplay or screenshots were shown, Abrams and Mustard discussed some of their inspirations and their collaboration, with Abrams notably wanting to expand into gaming, despite Hollywood and video games not having such a great history with one another.

SPYJINX is currently being described as “a unique blend between… an action-strategy game mixed with really dynamic world building with a healthy dose of RPG character development.” As Abrams and Mustard put it, the beta will also allow for players to lend a helping hand in that development, with Abrams stating, “every player is in the brainstorming session with us.”

ChAIR and Bad Robot hope to have the game playable by as many people as possible on whatever device they want to play it on. The versatility of the Unreal Engine the game will use should allow for that, whether it’s PC, mobile phones, tablets, or consoles. And ChAIR’s past experience with the Infinity Blade series suggests they know what they’re doing. This is also not the first foray into gaming made by Bad Robot, as the company is currently partnered with Valve to bring a new game mode into Team Fortress 2 named ‘PASS Time.’ The announcement was made in August 2015 and only one map has been developed so far with a release date TBA.

Abrams noted that if the project ends up becoming what he and Mustard hope it will, then he’s going to be spending too much time playing SPYJINX himself. Considering the studios behind it and how Abrams described it during the interview, then SPYJINX is definitely something to keep an eye out for, regardless of what device you’re going to play it on.

The closed beta for SPYJINX will launch in 2016 and you can register now for a chance to gain access when it drops.